By failing to achieve at least the average score of students from developed countries in international assessments, the Brazil fails to gain 2 percentage points in the Gross domestic product (GDP) per year. This is the conclusion of a study by researchers from the School of Economics Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV)which summarizes the evidence for the effects of Training in the growth of a nation. Brazil is one of the bottom places in valuation rankings and its average GDP over the last ten years has been 0.26%.
The work also makes it clear that a country’s increase in prosperity is due to improvements in the quality of education and not just to school enrollment rates, as was previously believed. The dozens of studies analyzed included country results in assessments such as the Stepprepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
One of the 2022 studies by Stanford University’s Eric Hanushek shows that gains for the region will accelerate over the course of the 21st century. “Education is a necessary prerequisite for sustainable growth, for a positive cycle. The country is not only producing more, people’s lives are improving, health, less crime, higher wages, innovation, political participation,” says the FGV professor and head of the Center for Evaluation and Results of Lusophone Africa and Brazil (Clear ), André Portela, responsible for the study.
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Studies considered by the FGV also show how a better quality school has a positive impact on other social aspects, such as reducing homicide rates and domestic violence. There’s also a Brazilian survey that suggests the surge in idealthe country’s educational development index, is associated with higher job creation rates in the municipalities.
“The real engine of the economy is not the interest rate, but human capital, which endures and has real impact over the long term,” says the Lemann Foundation’s director of knowledge, data and research, Daniel De Bonis. The study was conducted on behalf of the company. “We always see that when we should be discussing investing in education, the economic debate gains importance. Every year we lose by not providing children with proper learning is future wealth we lose.”
Research shows that improved education has an even greater impact on developing countries. In lowermiddleincome countries, GDP could increase by up to 28%; by up to 16% among highincome countries like Brazil and by 10% among highincome countries. Examples of nations that have improved in terms of education and economic growth in recent decades include Singapore, South Korea, Portugal and Poland, all of which score above the average for OECD member countries.
For example, in the last PISA survey, conducted in 2018 and published in 2019, Brazil had a mathematics score of 382, while the OECD average is 489. In science, it was 404 and 489, respectively.
According to Portela, if Brazilian students improved their grades by about 50 points, the country’s GDP would grow by 1 percentage point, which is half the average for developed countries. Throughout the last decade (20112020), with recession and pandemic, Brazil recorded an average GDP of 0.26% per year, its worst performance in history.
With the current result in Pisa, the majority of Brazilian students are at what is considered below the basic level in reading, mathematics and science, the three domains assessed by Pisa. Even with an increase in grades in recent years, 4 out of 10 teenagers in this country the exam is taken at 15 years old are unable to recognize the main idea of a text, read graphics, solve problems with integers or an experiment easy to understand scientifically.
According to analyzed studies, it would take a decade to reach the level of if Brazil continues the same pace in human capital development Chile and three decades to reach nations like Portugal and Japan. The situation has worsened with the pandemic COVID19whose research shows a learning deficit in children across the country particularly in the literacy phase.
For De Bonis, the study is opportune at this point in time with a new federal and state government. “So that they have a longterm and less immediate perspective. They may not be able to do it in four years, but they can lay the groundwork and put education at the heart of politics.” Brazil needs to invest more in education, but it also performs worse than other nations with similar incomes. “There is a need to responsibly scale up investment in education, value teachers and invest in infrastructure.”
During the government of Jair Bolsonaro, the Ministry of Education (MEC) suffered several budget cuts affecting primary and higher education. During the pandemic there has been no help from schools or public policies to close the education gap. The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) managed to guarantee around R$ 10 billion more for education during the PEC transition period, in particular for the not yet announced new regulation of school meals. Increases in the value of graduate grants were announced in February, but new investments are still expected.